As much of Israeli society -- our society -- is swept up in the fever of the most recent war on Gaza, there are those voices that refuse to accept a present or future of war, hostility, occupation and violence. One of those voices belong to Udi Segal, a 19-year-old Israeli from Kibbutz Tuval.

We hear it after every mass shooting: "Guns don't kill, people kill," as though actually holding a pistol was in any way the emotional equal to cranking up the nerve to club someone to death. There's a reason we call those little actuators "triggers."

Perhaps the rulers of nations, learning nothing since the time of Alexander the Great, will continue to mobilize their citizens for war until only small bands of miserable survivors roam a barren, charred, radioactive wasteland.

It's amazing to me how much of our spiritual and emotional problems have clear biological and physical causes. The reason he was so demanding is that his body was hungry, and so his brain went into alarm mode:

By the time my second born was 4-years-old he had built an arsenal in the toy room that Rambo would be proud of. Everything, he proved, could be a gun: candy canes, markers, his little sister's diapers, a piece of toast with the bites in all the right places. If he had known about the NRA, he probably would have joined.

the policy and media focus on militant operations overshadow nonviolent Syrian initiatives, which overlooks the necessary factors for peace and reconciliation. Syria nonviolent movements do exist -- and persist -- but without much attention.

We need to develop some skillful means both to witness grief, and to live in grief. We need to learn how to support rather than to solve. We need to practice being in there with grief, rather than getting out of it. And we need to hear the distinction between the two.

We must never forget the full range of Dr. King's vision, nor the full tragedy of the world he sought to heal, nor the revolutionary spirit which he saw as our only hope of achieving his vision -- making do with everything we have to try to keep freedom ringing.

As capital punishment laws come under closer scrutiny, we can expect to see significant progress away from the practice. However, this will not simply happen with the passage of time. It will require a greater level of engagement from the millions of people who now understand that it is time for capital punishment to end.

Every day of the week, The Pollination Project provides $1000 in seed funding to an individual who is working to make the world -- or just their own community -- a better, more peaceful and more sustainable place. Here are the extraordinary people and ideas changing the world this week.

In the weeks since his death at age 95, Nelson Mandela's thinking on the strategic direction of the liberation struggle in South Africa has been oversimplified by proponents of nonviolent and armed resistance alike.